Perfecting a Tron Game 63
Rock, Paper, Shotgun has a review of an old but entertaining freeware Tron game called Armagetron . The author heaps praise on the game for its "beautiful simplicity" and its exciting multiplayer options. More screenshots and a wiki are available on the game's website. Quoting:
"It's all about speed, really. You might think driving in clever geometric patterns would win you the game, but speed is the real the alpha and the omega of Armagetron. See, if you can drive parallel to old enemy trails for long enough to get your speed up to two times, three times or even four times more than your starting speed then you become a hunter of men. It becomes within your power to dart off towards other players, overtake them, and take a couple of quick turns that mean your trail boxes them into a tiny space."
Re:editors.. (Score:4, Interesting)
I know that editing a news site is a difficult job, but you might have wanted to start by looking up "news" in a dictionary.
I just did [reference.com] and it looks like this is valid.
a person, thing, or event considered as a choice subject for journalistic treatment; newsworthy material.
After all, the article on the Tron game was posted just 24 hours ago, which is standard reporting.
Having said that, Slashdot's slogan is hardly something one must follow as anally as you do. After all, we have Ask Slashdot and other pieces that don't count as news.
Re:Tron 2.0? (Score:3, Interesting)
just a idea, probably has been tried and failed, but anyhow: :)
I know a lot about how path prediction works through delta timing, but for a game that relies on timing as heavily as Tron wouldn't it be possible to build the reverse of that and instead of predicting where the player is, don't allow them to move until they've registered where the other player is at that time. With a lot of lag though this would definitly make the game unplayable however.
Just out of curiosity, is there any way that anyone can think of that to cure,or make less visible lag, without making a game like TRON unplayable? or for that matter the answer to life, the universe and everything?
Tron Arcade Game (Score:3, Interesting)
Everybody seems to do Light Cycles. There are 3 other games in the arcade game - Grid Bugs, Tanks and MCP Cone. Anybody doing an update of those?
Re:Excellent game (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Tron 2.0? (Score:4, Interesting)
It used to be fine for me online unless I was trying to have a Skype conversation at the same time (it was still slightly playable even then though). That was just on 1Mb ADSL a couple of years ago.
I think the summary is wrong personally, speed of your vehicle isn't always the most important factor - at least for online play. I've seen people do some amazing stuff (and done a small amount myself) with the lag buffer thingy: when you run into a wall you don't die immediately - you die after a certain amount of time that is defined by the server. If you are clever about it you can go between 2 trails that seem to be right next to each other, and you can keep turning to face the wall and face away again, creating teeeeeny tiny little walls for your opponents to run into if they try running up the side of your trail, etc. It's great fun, very tactical and skillful all rolled up. I enjoyed the teamplay games the best, with the maps rotating every 10-20 minutes or so into different challenges (some maps were incredibly tiny but with a large time buffer before dying, some maps you could go in 6 directions instead of 4, etc). Standard deathmatch was always fun too of course, and was the best way to hone your skills.
Unfortunately for me the linux version's inputs seemed to be quite laggy compared to the Windows one. Maybe it was just my keyboard driver or something though.
The graphics are excellent IMO! For me this game is mostly about that sound and the great gameplay. What more do you want out of a game that is based on CGI from an 80s movie?
Re:Tron!? This aint no dangblammed Tron! (Score:3, Interesting)
I remember some strange orange console from when I was really young (probably about 3), can't even remember what games it had. Could have been something like this [old-computers.com].
The first console I remember probably was our Commodore 100 when I was 3 or 4, I used to type in programs from the manual to draw circles and triangles..
Re:GLTron is foss! (Score:3, Interesting)
Too bad it's in deep hibernation. Although the author has a ton of slightly unfinished modifications sitting on his harddrive, they haven't made it into CVS (at sourceforge) / subversion (at berlios) yet. Blame marriage, two kids, a new job (math teacher), and possible a bit of WoW for it.
Re:Tron!? This aint no dangblammed Tron! (Score:3, Interesting)
Now get off my lawn.